


Heard and Seen

by I_Shouldnt_Be_Here



Category: Shubh Mangal Zyada Saavdhan (2020)
Genre: Angst, Author is also sleep deprived, Author tried something new, Fluff and Angst, Magical Realism, Multi, One Shot, Romance, Stargazing, non-binary characters, please leave a comment I really want to know what you thought about this, stories and stargazing, there's two parallel plots maybe, very experimental
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-09
Updated: 2020-10-09
Packaged: 2021-03-08 04:20:59
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,063
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26919505
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/I_Shouldnt_Be_Here/pseuds/I_Shouldnt_Be_Here
Summary: Spontaneity often makes the most out of a boring weekend. Stargazing three hours away from Delhi, with stories told under the stars.
Relationships: Kartik Singh/Aman Tripathi
Comments: 12
Kudos: 24





	Heard and Seen

**Author's Note:**

> Enjoy!

_One thousand billion light years away. 32 nd of February 2017. _

_A(two) star(s), in the stellar cluster of ******. The surface of each pulsating with magnificent flares of flaming hydrogen, the fuel dancing away outward before it burnt down into heavier helium. Each surface was luminous, alive, like skin, each flare a rising goose pimple in reaction to the bone-chilling cold of space._

_Mathematics and physics said that this could not happen. There was simply too much space, like two bees in a hollow glass sphere the size of a satellite dish._

_The two stars spun closer and closer together, hypnotised_ _by their own gravity, flares of invisible ultraviolet light umbrellaing around the skin like long, flowing skirts. The sheer emptiness of space nudged them apart, successful at first but failing, with each drunken move shifting them closer together._

_…_

“Are we there yet?” A**** said, snuggling closer to the hood of their jacket. The air smelt different, as if it had the black blood of the earth and not the metal of factories.

“Not yet, about half an hour more.” K**** replied, clawing and loosening their hands from the bike handle to get the blood flowing. The brown rocky road made them clench the handle tighter after it disbalanced the bike just a little.

K**** bore the brunt of the wind rushing in the opposite direction. It chilled them to the bone, scraping raw the skin of their cheeks, turning them into sand paper.

They felt arms around their waist. Smooth-clothed, synthetic-jacketed arms. The hands instinctively dug into K****’s pockets, leeching the heat from their belly.

Their body seemed to generate more warmth as A**** stole away a little, every passing minute. K**** swore their muscles shivered. But again, they guessed it was a side effect of the rocky road rattling their teeth in firm-socketed jaws.

K**** felt their head pushing against the inside of the helmet, until the hillock in front urged them to stop.

“We’re here.” A**** chest was draped comfortably over K*****’s back. They missed that proximity when both of them got down from the bike, an ancient nut job that K**** had modified aggressively to suit these roads.

“Help me out here, I can’t handle this nut job.” A**** asked as they struggled to set the bike on its stand. K**** sighed.

A**** looked at them beseechingly, as K**** gave an annoyed shrug, then proceeded to huff their way through the process.

A**** stood to the side and watched the ripples of K****’s kick originate from the bike stand, travel from their jeans to the shoulders of their leather jacket.

“Let’s go, we have a hill to climb.” K****’s ‘ _come on!’_ shrug was enthusiastic.

“How do you even find this much energy at 12am?” A**** gave a tired sigh as both set off to climb a small hillock overlooking a fenced field.

At the hillock’s precipice, impulse took over K****’s mind and they covered A****’s eyes. A**** played along.

“Wait for a while, get used to this warm red darkness beneath my hands until I show you another kind of darkness.” K****’s breathed down their neck and A**** shivered.

A**** was stunned at the view.

“We escaped one kind of light, to find another.” They whispered to themselves, lips moving in the barest suggestion of comprehensible words.

“What did you say?” K**** asked.

“Oh, never mind.”

“Sit down, na…” K**** took off their jacket and fashioned it into a sort of pillow for their heads. They shivered a little, the thin white tee shirt barely offering cover against the chill in the air.

The stars stopped A**** dead in their tracks. Their neck craned upward to drink in the sight of the stars. The skin on the back of their skull tightened almost in disbelief, almost as if something so grand, so magnificent, could only be perceived as a threat.

They took in gentle breaths, focusing on an unchanging arm of the milky way. They sank down into the ground against the smooth synthetic lining of K****’s jacket.

Both of them looked up at the stars, soft sighs of breaths interrupting the silence. When K**** took in the magnificent view spread out over their heads, they felt as if they had spent all their lives in underwater murk, swimming up towards an impossible, tantalising yellow street lamp, the only wavering bright spot in these depths. They swam, chasing, chasing that impossible yellow patch.

Until that moment.

K**** knew, they had only been staring at a yellow shadow.

“Lovely view, isn’t it?” A**** interrupted. K**** almost laughed.

“’Lovely’ doesn’t cover half of it.” K**** flecked a finger across A****’s cheek.

A**** was hyperaware of K****’s elbow brushing against their ear (they had pillowed their hands under the head). Did it mean anything? Was its meaning different under a ceiling of stars instead of the rust-metal roof of a crowded Delhi bus?

The circumstances that made K**** go on this three-hour long drive beyond Delhi were also not _usual_ , to say the least. It was one of those rare weekends when you can _feel_ Friday’s ghost blocking your safety valves, threatening to make you erupt into a series of bad decisions on Saturday.

Also, K**** was apparently escaping from someone who had been hitting on them and just didn’t seem to get the hint.

_This decision isn’t half bad._ A**** thought.

“Ah, I wish I could tell you stories about these stars. Do you know any?” A****’s cheek prickled as he asked, right where K****’s finger had brushed.

“Oh, I don’t know any stories about the stars, but I have a theory.” K**** shot them a mischievous smile as they brought out one of their hands from beneath their head.

“What theory?” A**** shot back.

K**** caught A****’s hand and pointed it towards the sky. A****’s eyes widened. They were thankful that K**** couldn’t see the vibrant pink blush warming over their cheeks in the dim light.

“I think, that, the stars are a bunch of random words in the sky, some sweet, some tragic.” A****’s breath hitched in their throat as K****’s fingers wrapped around their hand, right before they could make a quip about that absurd theory.

“Hear me out” K**** gripped the hand tighter. “The stars are a bunch of random words strewn across the sky. And people across ages string them randomly as constellations to tell their stories. It’s like a device, you know, like a puppeteer’s marionette, or a marching band’s drum…” K**** took A****’s hand on a ride across the sky, pointing to this star and that, not having the slightest clue about the names hidden behind those points of light.

“I’m not sure if I believe you, but it’d be fun, isn’t it? Let me name a star for this day…” A**** smiled.

“Hehe, wouldn’t be any less valid. What about that tiny blue one?” K**** pointed to a star.

…

_The ultraviolet light skirts snipped and scraped against each other gently, a prelude to the violence that was about to be orchestrated. The two stars, previously a part of a binary star system, were about to give up on that label today. They were to fuse, become one with each other or fail trying._

_They came closer, close enough to touch._

_It was rather surprising how both stars touched each other so, so tenderly. The first snowflake on a child’s tongue._

_A split second later, mayhem began._

_A third of their luminescent sphere skins ripped open respectively. Stellar guts leaked out like yolk from the lacerated bellies of the stars._

_The guts leaked, organising themselves loosely into a rather tubby snow-person shape._

_…_

“What made us pollute the earth with so much light? Enough that we have to drive three hours out of the city to get a decent look at the stars?” K**** asked, flippant words floating around A****’s ears. They had spent quite a while just gazing at the stars, both not acknowledging the (pleasant) fact of their hair brushing against each other’s scalp.

“What did you say?” A**** asked, a little dazed. K**** repeated their question, mindful of A****’s (ironically) star-struck eyes. Well, it gave them precious extra seconds to steal glances at A****’s face. They took a moment to answer, deer-like round eyes betraying their words before it leaked out of their lips.

“Maybe…maybe we got jealous.”

“How so?” K****’s ears perked up.

“How _ever_ many times we try to string these stars together, to make them tell _us_ our _own_ stories, the shapes will always remain imperfect, and we, will _never_ be able to understand them.” A**** aired their words looking at the inscrutable sky, their throat elongated throat moving in harmony with their lips uttering those big words underlining even bigger speculations. And K**** was _enchanted._

“Sounds interesting…”

“So, we tried to steal the company of the stars onto the ground, creating our artificial visual cacophonies which drown out their music, because we are so lonely...” A****’s chin turned downward, sadly.

“We lost the darkness of night, and I feel we lost a part of ourselves with it. The lights on earth are an insult to the skies.” K**** added.

“True…” A**** _tsked._

A****’s lips quivered, as if they had hesitant words waiting on its edges. K**** looked at them encouragingly. No words were too grand or too insignificant for this night.

“Maybe, we should have tried to understand each other instead of force feeding our stories to the stars.” Uncertainty tainted A****’s words.

“And what if we never, _ever_ come close to understanding even _one_ person?” K**** doubted.

“Then…then I guess…I guess just making them feel…feel _heard_ and _seen_ would be…enough.” A****’s throat got heavier with every word, the end of the sentence barely squeaking by on a sorrow-laden voice. Tears shone over dense eyelashes.

At that moment, K**** knew they were projecting. A**** cried, aborted sobs punctuating the silence. They got up, turned to the side and sniffed. This prompted K**** to get up and take the bold move of gathering A**** in their arms.

“It’s okay…” K**** ran their hands up and down A****’s arms.

“Why… why do I feel so goddamn _lonely_ all the time?” A**** was bawling loudly at this point. K**** patted their back gently, making sure not to unsettle A**** too much.

“You know…(sniff)…I feel like a graveyard ghost. A ghost who just _watches_ the world pass by.” A**** wiped the tears off their cheeks and eyelashes as K**** loosened their hold around A****’s waist.

K****’s throat thickened with sobs too.

_Why did A****’s sorrows feel like their own?_

Maybe because they already were, and _this_ was the moment of realisation, that it had been that way for quite a while.

“Distract me, please. You know of any stories? About anything?” A**** echoed their earlier request, diluting the terms of it a little, simultaneously rescuing K****’s thoughts from spiralling. A**** closed their eyes as they felt a warm hand brushing away the tears leaking from glassy red eyes.

“Hmm…let me think…” K**** said, keeping their voice deliberately airy to so as to not burden A**** further. Sniffs and frantic blinking to wash away the tears from their face kept time with K****’s thoughts.

“I remember. Lie down into the grass, and I’ll tell you a story…” The tension in A****’s shoulders gradually loosened, giving way to a pit of shame in their stomach which showed up as a fierce red on their cheeks. Both of them lied down on the grass, A**** was glad that they didn’t have to look at the other’s face anymore.

“Long ago…” K**** gestured vaguely to the sky.

“Long ago…When rivers did not sing and there were no stars in the sky, when the known world did not exist, there existed only two entities. Hmm. I would not say they were two, when they were truly the one and the same.”

“What were they?” A**** asked hesitantly.

“Patience, grasshopper.” K**** smiled at the stars.

“One was Chaos, the other was Nyx. One was the eternal void while the other was the eternal night. One was unfathomable emptiness while the other was full to bursting with substance beyond any recognisable form. They spiralled around each other in human form, in animal form, in bird form, in formless-form, locked in a struggle beyond comprehension. Round and round, they spun around each other in tired circles, neither drifting apart nor coming closer.” 

“Go on…I’m listening.”

“There needed to be some resolution for this conflict. Otherwise the inertia of movement, building up at an alarming pace would doom the construction of the world before it even began. Beyond a certain limit, they would just go on spinning forever.”

“So, on one meaningless day and time, Nyx crystallised. They crystallised the emptiness within them and the substance within Chaos into a paradox. Into an inconceivable mystery. The mystery grew, grew further, causing both of them immeasurable pain.”

“What was the mystery?”

“It was an egg.” A**** snorted a little. K**** smiled along with them.

“I know it’s a little anticlimactic, but think about it, isn’t an egg the ultimate metaphor for the birthing of life?” K**** said, imploring A**** to dig deeper into this ridiculous metaphor.

“Alright, as I was saying, Chaos and Nyx gave a mighty sigh of relief after the birthing of the world egg.”

“I told you, the inside of this egg was a paradox. Nothing and everything made sense at the same time. ‘Up’ was ‘down’ and ‘down’ was ‘up’. ‘Left’ and ‘right’ spun into impossible spirals. Time was a flowing river, a rushing waterfall, a placid pond or all of them at once. Light from the stars and the dark side of the moon were one and the same.”

“So, you see, these contradictions couldn’t exist all at the same time. The shell of this egg was immensely fragile, created with the Void and the Night’s rage and strife. Their conflict gave birth to more conflict…”

“The shell continued thinning. The insides boiled and raged, raged and boiled again, and again, and yet again. Then, they split into three… hurtling so far away from each other so as to never meet each other again. One became the heavens, the other became the mortal world, and the last piece became the underworld. The contradictions had so much space to exist that they slowly became separate…’Up’ and ‘down’ now meant different things instead of being one confused mess.”

“Then was born Desire, without which all land would remain rocks and stones without a single flower…Are you listening?” K**** nudged the other slowly, only to find they had been dozing for quite a while. A**** blinked owlishly, trying the erase the sleep from their eyes.

“Too bad I missed the story…” They rubbed their eyes, getting up to glance at the stars once again.

“No problem, I’ll tell the rest of it to you when we get back.” They prompted K**** to sit up too.

“I’ll wait for it.” A**** looked into K****’s eyes and gave them a half smile.

K**** beheld A****’s face in the partial darkness, illuminated small battery-operated lamp A**** had insisted on bringing along. At that moment, regardless of whatever words A**** had used, K**** would always hear it as,

I’ll wait for _you_. Always.

K**** knew a simple truth, one which was before them for a long time, from the moment they had come to know each other. But the fact was, this truth hid itself in the corners of eyes that shared glances and between the lines of words spoken.

_This, was how being ‘heard’ and ‘seen’ felt like._

…

_Colliding with each other was only the beginning. The wounds on their luminous bodies stitched together, almost invading each other. Their insides merged, mixed and boiled into one._

_The outward collision was the least violent act on the surface. The actual violence happened inside the careless peanut shape, insides writhing with rage._

_A long while passed before the two stars could stabilise. Then, slowly, they hit a fragile peace. The weird groundnut shape solidified into an unhappy bargain._

_…_

Even though A**** couldn’t listen to all of what K**** had said, they thought that those words were worthy enough, interesting enough to be listened to later, when they had the time and attention to behold those words and dive between the lines.

K**** knew A**** would always wait for their words. Wait for their words and wait for the both of them to be on the same page. Always.

K**** could be more thankful for a person like them. In a world where everyone had something to say, they seemed to be the only person who _listened._

Now K**** could understand why they felt often felt lonely. The amount of attention they gave to the world, it simply wasn’t given to them in return.

K**** decided they would try giving A**** all the attention and care they could. Impulsively, they put their arms around A****.

“Hmm, we’ve been watching at the stars the whole time, you think any of them above are watching us?” A**** said as they let go of each other.

“What about this one? Looks like a nosy parker…” K**** said, beaming their 1000-megawatt smile at A****.

“Hehe, this one? It almost looks like two separate stars joined up together, see? You can almost see two different points of light _very_ close to each other…”

“Ahh, possible. Makes me sad that we have to return to depressingly grey Delhi skies…” K**** got up and dusted the grass off the back of their jeans.

A**** saw a night sky in reverse on the back of K****’s white shirt, speckled with small blades of grass which looked black in the semi darkness. It grew smaller as K**** took a few steps away from the spot where they had been sitting together.

A**** ran up to K**** impulsively and hugged them from behind with a sigh. K****’s shoulder’s loosened on instinct. Pleasant shivers travelled down both of their bodies.

“I love you…” A**** breathed into K****’s spine.

“Did you say something?” K**** asked.

“Nah, never mind.”

…

**Author's Note:**

> Well, I had some stuff going on inside my head, writing this was almost therapeutic. Tell me what you felt about this. And have I ever told you how I'm in love with every long comment y'all leave on my works? I read old comment threads for an instant serotonin pick-me-up.
> 
> Kudos and comments make my day!  
> Have a great day/night!  
> -Advaita


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